Krauthammer is lying. Or else Jimmy Carter and all of a dozen close observers and authors I could name, most of them Jewish and Israeli, are all lying. All of these writers have registered their dismay at the existence of a myth of a "generous offer" by Israel that was supposedly rejected by Yasser Arafat. They all assert that no such offer was ever made and that, in truth, Israel's "offer" was nothing more than the usual truncated, powerless, reservation-type plots of land that no one could ever accept as a state. But Krauthammer calls it "astonishingly generous."

Likewise, his fanciful, even silly, "explanation" of the motive force behind the 2000 uprising: "Arafat . . . walked away and started his terror war." In truth, the uprising couldn't have been averted given the pent-up anger since the previous round of "negotiations" in 1993 had produced nothing but the influx of 50,000 new settlers into the occupied territories, the paving of more than 400 kilometers of Israeli-only roads on confiscated land, demolition of more than 800 Palestinian homes, a threefold increase in unemployment, the arrest of 13,000 Palestinians and complete curtailment of freedom of movement.

Israel has no intention of negotiating a two-state solution. All of its "negotiations" are, and always have been, a ploy to buy time to blanket with settlements the very land over which the parties are supposedly negotiating. The likes of Krauthammer are there -- and given free rein in the mass media -- to provide cover for it all.

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